Software Update: FreeNAS 11.2 Beta 2

The second beta version of FreeNAS version 11.2 has been released. With this software, a computer included in the network can be used as network attached storage, so purely for storing data. Additional functionality can be added with the help of plugins. The whole is based on FreeBSD and provided with a clear web interface. More information about the possibilities of FreeNAS can be found at this page are being found. The announcement looks like this:

FreeNAS 11.2-BETA2

We are pleased to announce the general availability of FreeNAS 11.2-BETA2. This second BETA of the 11.2 series is considered to be feature-complete and ready for testing. Users, especially those who use Plugins, Jails, or VMs, are encouraged to update to this release in order to take advantage of the many improvements and bug fixes to those subsystems.

To update to this release, select the 11.2-STABLE train in System → Update. Should you need to return to the 11.1 series after updating, reboot and select that boot environment from the boot menu.

These major features are new in the 11.2 series:

• The login screen defaults to the new, Angular-based UI. Users who wish to continue to use the classic UI can select “Legacy UI” in the login screen.
• Beginning with this release, the screenshots that appear in the published version of the Guide and in the Guide icon within the new UI are for the new UI. However, users who click on the Guide icon while logged into the classic UI will continue to see screenshots for the old UI. The availability of both versions of the Guide is to assist users as they become familiar with the new UI during the transition period before the classic UI is deprecated in a future release.
• The rewrite from the old API to the new middlewared continues. Once the API stabilizes and the rewrite is complete, api.freenas.org will be deprecated and replaced by the new API documentation. In the mean time, to see the API documentation for the new middleware, log into the new UI, click on the URL for the FreeNAS system in your browser’s location bar, and add /api/docs to the end of that URL.
• The boot loader has changed from GRUB to the native FreeBSD boot loader. This should resolve several issues that some users experienced with GRUB. GRUB was introduced as a temporary solution until the FreeBSD boot loader had full support for boot environments, which it now has.
• The Plugins and Jails backend has switched from warden to iocage and warden will no longer receive bug fixes. The new UI will automatically use iocage to create and manage Plugins and Jails. Users are encouraged to recreate any existing Plugins and Jails using the new UI to ensure that they are running the latest supported application versions.
• Virtual Machines are more crash resistant. When a guest is started, the amount of available memory is checked and an initialization error will occur if there is insufficient system resources. When a guest is stopped, its resources are returned to the system. In addition, the UEFI boot menu fix allows Linux kernels 4.15 and higher to boot properly.
• Cloud Sync Tasks provides configuration options to encrypt data before it is transmitted and to keep it in the encrypted format while stored on the cloud. The filenames can also be encrypted.
• Preliminary support has been added for Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs).
• OpenZFS is up-to-date with Illumos and slightly ahead due to support for sorted scrubs which were ported from ZFS on Linux. Notable improvements include channel programs, data disk removal, more resilient volume import, the ability to import a pool with missing vdevs, pool checkpoints, improved compressed ARC performance, and ZIL batching. Note that many of these improvements need further testing so have not yet been integrated into the UI.

Known Issues

• Cron Job Tasks created using the new UI will generate an error if the job is viewed in the legacy UI. This bug will be fixed for RC1.
• If the UI does not automatically refresh after updating, restart the browser or open a new private window.